Exotic Scales: Infuse Exciting Sounds Into Your Solos

The exotic scales here offer an interesting alternative to the major, minor, blues, and pentatonic scales that most rock and pop guitarists use. At first, they might sound a little strange, but after you experiment with the fingerings and feel confident with them, try to fit them into your soloing. To understand how to use these scales, it’s helpful to know what scales they are related to. The Hungarian minor is closely related to the harmonic minor; the Hindu is similar to the Mixolydian mode; and the Japanese pentatonic is similar to the Phrygian mode. So, say you have a progression that you normally solo over with A harmonic minor; you could use the A Hungarian minor as well. Even if these related scales or modes are not all that familiar, the figures below will help you get an idea of what kinds of progressions the exotic scales will work with.

Each exercise includes two fingerings of the scale followed by a riff. Once you have the scales down, you can use them to improvise over the riffs.

This riff features a dropped C tuning. To achieve this, simply detune string 6 down to a C; you can determine that the pitch is correct by making sure the detuned string matches the C note on the third fret of the fifth string.

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